MARSHALL, Catherine: Christy

CHRISTY

BY

CATHERINE MARSHALL

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Nonetheless, I was standing on the spot which I had always longed to see - the site of the adventures recounted so vividly by my parents during all my growing -up years. In a sense, I had lived through those experiences too.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 15


Presently we were standing at the edge of the yard she knew so well. No one was around. It was like walking onto an empty stage setting or into one's own dream.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 18


The story aches to be told, Catherine. The secrets of the human spirit that Alice Henderson knew, the wisdom that she shared is needed by so many today. And the mountain people, my friends - Fairlight and Opal, Jeb Spencer and Aunt Polly Teague, Ruby Mae and Little Burl, my school children - I want people to know them as they really were. But Catherine, I'm not the one to put it on paper. You know, sometimes the dreams of the parents must be fulfilled in the children.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 19


And my brother George, hearing the announcement, had stumbled out of bed and down the stairs to the landing, where he had stood leaning sleepily on the banister, touseled hair in his eyes, to tell me good-bye.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 21


It was a lonely, formless landscape. I wondered sudddenly if I was going to be homesick even before I got to El Pano.
Now the snow was beginning ot fall again with the wind rising. It was a strange wind, a whimpering sobbing wind, with pain in it. Yet gales were nothing new to me. Asheville had always been known as a windy city. I had always had tohold onto my hat as I rounded the corner onto Grant Street, sometimes using physical force topush, push against the invisible yet mightly walls of wind.
But there was something different about this wind. It was not a single note, but many notes playing up and down the scale, harmonizing at one moment, discordant the next, retreating, advancing.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 27


"You come from a highfalutin' home" - I opened my mouth to speak, but the voice rushed on - "easy to tell that. Your clothes, pretty fancy do-dads- The way you talk. Oh I see a lot of folks, and if I do say so myself who shouldn't, I'm a pretty good judge of folks."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35


She could talk the hind legs off a donkey, the staion mand had said.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35


"Cause nobody really knows, and me, I just saw wood and say nothin'."
I could scarcely visualize Mrs. Tatum "saying nothing" at any time,
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 36



"Hit ain't bad. Wait until I get acrost though, so you don't get no sway."
Standing on the bank, I felt sick at my stomach. I never had liked heights. There had been that time on the railroad trestle two hundred feet above the French Broad River when some friends and I were coming back from a picnic. It would not have been so bad except for the wide open spaces between the trestles. And when I had looked down, well - many times since then I had dreamed of it. And now here was my old nightmare come horribly true.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 45


"There's another way that's shorter. But that way is so up-tilted, you could stand straight up and bite the ground."
I wondered as I panted after him if any piece of land could be more up-tilted than this. There was a sudden gust of wind. The higher we climbed, the stronger the gale that blew from the north. Near the top, the bank to our right was not high enough to give much protection. There were moments when I was sure we were about to be blown over the cliff. Yet the man walking in front gave no indication that he even noticed the buffeting of the wind.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 46


It seemed so much longer. Was it only four weeks ago that I had followed Mr. Pentland up that mountain trail into this new life? Why, my life in Asheville seemd so far away that it could have ben months or years.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 92


Snow never lasted so long in Asheville, and of the second day it was always dirty from soot and traffic. I never knew that snow could be so beautiful until I saw it miles away from a city. Such sparkling pristine pure white.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 96



"Every bit of life, every single one of us has a dark side," she retorted. "When you decided to leave home and take this teaching job, you were venturing out of your particular ivory tower. I know, I was reared in an ivory tower too. When we get our first good look at the way life realy is, and a lot of us want to run back to shelter in a hurry."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 101


"A Supreme Being with real power and real love wouldn't stand by and watch a little girl raped and a woman hanged. How could He?"
"He would have to, if He'd given us men and women a genuine freedom of choice." Miss Alice's voice was gentle. "I think it's like this... The Creator made the world a cooperative enterpirse. In order for it to be that way, God had to give us the privilege of going His way or of refusing to go His way."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 102


I happen to know that a certain man for two days disregarded a strong inner impulse to go to her. Finally he did go, but it was too late. So God's clear order went unheeded. And evil had its day. The result of our disobedience can be that simple, that terrible.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 104


I awoke to a sunshiny morning feeling so good that at first I had trouble remembering what I had been so gloomy about the night before. Oh, yes - the O'Teale cabin and my feelings of inadequacy as a teacher. But nothing could be that bad. I thought, as I stood before the front window savoring my view, feeling the warmth of the sun through the glass.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 106


...if we will let God, He can use even our disappointments, even our annoyances to bring us a blessing. There's a practical way to start the process too: by thanking Him for whatever happens, no matter how disagreeable it seems.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 116


Though I understood Miss Alice's effots to underscore the fine heritage of these people and to build on that, I could also see just by looking around me how we tend to over-romanticize history. Life in those other centuries had not been all knights-and-ladies stuff. There was nothing romantic about cottages where eight or ten people slept in one room with no privacy; where there were no bathrooms, not even outside privies - even if the cottage did happen to have picturesque thatch on the roof. There was nothing glamourous in any century about no running water in which to bathe or about fleas on human beings or about the blackgum twigs with which some of the women right now , in 1912, dipped snuff and then rubbed their teeth and gums. So many of the people had terrible looking teeth or no teeth at all. And the eye trouble that was so prevalent. I had learned that it was trachoma and that it was a dangerous infection which, if unchecked resulted in blindness.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 122


As they struggled along the Indian trails or followed the river-routes to make their way in a new land, they had looked upon the same trees I was seeing now.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 129

"The point is Dr. Ferrand won't accept any money unless he knows the individual has had inner direction to giv it. He feels that money donnned out of people won't be blessed for the workd anyway."
These were new ideas to me but I respected them In fact, in the light of such a philosophy of giving, now I thought I saw what was wrong with the never-ending pleas for funds from charitable organizations and pulpits; most of the time these solicitors were trying to pry money out of people by riding roughshod over their individual right of choice.
But Miss Alice continued, "I believe each person has something special he's meant to do. That being the case, surely we have no right to foist "causes' - even our favorite ones - only present them. Dr. Ferrand believes - and I agree - that only one motive is good enought to warrant giving: because the self, without pressure, freely chooses to make the gift.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 146


Every Monday morning of each successive day handed me problems in school teaching for which no Teacher's Training Course could ever had prepared me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150


What was I to do about the body ordors of children, who were disinclined to take any baths during the cold months; who, if theyowned anyunderwear, usually had it dewsn on for the winter?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150


This led directly to the idea of including a hygine or health lesson in each day's curriculum.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151


In addition, as I saw how closely the children watched "Teacher," how much they wanted to be like me and in how many ways they were copying me, I tried to be more meticulous about grooming than I had ever been, wearing freshly starched and ironed shirtwaists, always keeing my hair clean and shining.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151



Then as time went on, I made an amazing discovery; the odors ("funks" as my children said, using a sturdy Shakespearean word) were no longer so much of a problem for me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151


It was not that my hygiene lessons had yet made that much difference nor that I had accustomed to the smells because in other situations my crazy nose bothered me as much as always. It was rather that as I came to know the children and to think of them as persons rather than names in my grade book, I forgot my reactions and began to love them. I suppose the principle was that higher affection will always expel the lower whenever we give the higher affection sway.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 152



Naturally wiht sixty-seven pupils in all grades to teach, it was hard to find time for such individual attention. Nor did it seem right to give most of my time to the dull, slow children rather than to the bright ones. Par of this was solved by appointing Junior Teachers to hlep me These were my oldest and best pupils.... They in turn profited from the experience of teaching the younger ones.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 157



(a suprising number of these people lived and died without going more than a few miles from home) bred a self-contained individualism. Set down on its own hollow, each household had to depend on itself - and did. The Cove people were suspicious about joining any group efort or organization.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 159


"...if God loves ever'body, then we'uns got to love ever'body too?"
So once I shut down my privilege of disliking anyone I chose and holding myself aloof if I could manage it, greater understanding, growing compassion came to me, more love for the children, and as time passed, for the older people too.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 160


The grace and gesture and the long tapering fingers (even though they were red and rough with cipped and broken nails) caught my attention. I stood there thinking that these should be the hands of a lady handling an ivory fan or smoothing her skirts of velvet or satin. They were the hands of an aristocrat, and here they were on a mountain woman, buried at the back of beyond.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 164


I thought of how hard my parents had tried to give me some appreication for good music. Yet somehow I could not deprecate the hmescpun minstrelsy I was hearing now. I sat there thinking about how all real music has to be born in the human spirit. Well these ballads surely had been.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 167


How is it that sometimes a melody and a lyric will wing their way into mind and heart to lodge there like a homing bird?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 168


VOCABULARY - CHRISTY

counterpin, pg 165
South Midland and Southern U.S. bedspread


mawkish, pg 156
having an insipid often unpleasant taste
probably from Old Norse mathkr
characterized by sickly sentimentality; weakly emotional; maudlin. 2. having a mildly sickening flavor; slightly nauseating.

Pristine, pg 96
1. a. Remaining in a pure state; uncorrupted by civilization. b. Remaining free from dirt or decay; clean [Latin pristinus; akin to Latin prior. Date: 1534 ]

HARRIS, Joanne, Chocolat

CHOCOLAT

BY JOANNE HARRIS

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

... hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 1


No one looks at us. We might as well be invisible; our clothing marks us as strangers, trnasients. They are polite, so polite; no one stares at us.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 3


She smells of smoke and frying pancakes and warm bedclothes on a winter's morning.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 5


A slight air of embarrassment prevails, of abashment at this excess of noise and color. Like rain in midsummer it evaporates, runs ion tthe cracked earth and through the parched stones, leaving barely a trace. Two hours later Lansquenet-sous-Tannes is invisible once more, like an enchanted village that appears only once every year. But for the carnival we should have missed it altogether.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 5


She is right. The smell is like daylight trapped for years until it has gone sour and rancid, of mouse droppings and the ghosts of things unremembered and unmourned. It echose like a cave, the small heat of our presence only serving to accentuate every shadow. Paint and sunlight and soapy water will rid it of the grime, but the sadness is another matter, the forlorn resonance of a house where no one has laughed for years.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 6


Sandalwood on our pillow to sweeten our dreams.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 7


After tha one one every looked up at my window, though I counted over sixty heads, scarves, berets, hats drawn down against tn invisible wind- but I felt their studied, curious indifference. They had matters of importance to consider, said their hunched shoulders and lowered heads.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 9


"Well, we could doo with some help here," I suggested. "Not you, of course-"quickly, as he began to reply. "But perhaps you know someone whou could do with the extra money? A plasterer, someone who might be able to help with the decorating?"
This was surely safe territory.
"I can't think of anyone."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 11

She has an odd facility for acquiring helpers. Though I offered to assist her, I doubted whether she would find many of our villagers willing.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 15



All I want is to guide them, mon pere, to free them from their sin. But they fight me at every turn, like children refusing wholesome fare in order to continue eating what sickents them. I know you understand. ... Their faces are sullen, resentful. Yesterday they lkeft the service with ash on their foreheads and a look of guilty relief. Left to their secret indulgences, their solitary vices. Don't they understand? The Lord sees everything; I see everything. Paul-Marie Muscate beats his wife. He pays ten Aves weekly in the confessional and leavees to begin again in exactly the same way. HIs wife steals. Last week she went to the market and stole trumpery jewelry from a vendor's stall. Guillaume Duplessis wants to know if animals have souls, and weeps when I tell him they don't. Charlotte Edouard thinks her husband has a mistress - I know he has three, but he confessional keeps me silent. What children they are! Their demainds leave me bloodied and reeling. But I cannot afford to show weakness. Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. I cannot afford to be lenient. That is why, once a week, I allow myself this one indulgence. Your mouth is as closely sealed, mon pere, as that of the confessional. Your ears are always open, your heart always kind. For an hour I can lay aside the burden. I can be fallible.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 13


I am not kind. I come here for my own releif, not yours. And yet i like to believe my visits givve you pleasure, keeping you in touch wiht the hard edges of a world gone soft and featureless.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 16


To be talked over as if you were an object - Can he hear us? Do you think he understands? - your opinioins unsought, discarded ... To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think ... This is the truth of hell, stripped of it's gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 16


A man of any age can choose his friends where he likes,
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 27



Some people never have to think about giving.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 28


He has a lot to learn, that man, even if he has a got a degree in theology. And my silly daughter too. You don't get degrees in life, do you?
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 30


"You don't get much entertainment around here," she observed. "Especially if you're old," She paused and peered at me again. "But with you I think maybe we're in for a little entertainment."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 30



"Oh, I'm not allowed chocolate. Caro and that idiot doctor won't allow it. Or anything else I might enjoy," she added wryly. "First smoking, then alcohol, now this... God knows if I gave up breathing perhaps I might live forever."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 31


I see the brave adventure we lived for so long in a different light now that I am the mother. I see myself as I was, the brown girl with the long uncombed hair, wearing cast-off charity-shop clothing, learning math the hard way, geography the hard way - How much bread for two francs? How far will a fifty-mark rail ticket take us? - And I do not want it for her.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 33



But I let her go without a word, aching to hold her but too aware of the wall of privacy slamming down between us. Children are born wild, I know. The best I can hope for is a little tenderness, a seeming docility. eneath the surface the wilderness remains, stark, savage, and alien.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 49


There is a kind of sorcery in all cooking: in the choosing of ingredients, the process of mixing, grating, melting, infusing, and flavoritng, the recipes taken from ancient books, the traditional utensils - the pestle and mortar with which my mother made her incense turned to a more homely purpose, her spices and aromatics giving up their subtleties to a baser, more sensual magic.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 51


...so much loving preparation, so much art and experience, put into a pleasure that can last only a moment, and which only a few will ever fully appreciate.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 51


To her, food was no pleasure, but a tiresome necessity to be worried over, a tax on the price of our freedom.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 51


"You won't ever guess his favorite, she says. "He hasn't got one."
"I find that difficult to believe," I smile. "Everyone has a favorite. Even Monsieur Muscat."
Lucie considers this for a moment. "Maybe his favorite is the one he takes from someone else," she tells me limpidly.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 63



As an antidote I read Jung and Herman Hesse and learned about the collective unconscious. Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. What we fear. There are no demons, but a collection of archetypes every civilization has in common. The fear of loss - Death. The fear of displacement - the Tower. The fear of transience - the Chariot.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 76


"It isn't me," I whispered. "It's you, it's supposed to be you, you're the Black Man, you're - Then I was falling backward through the looking glass with cards spraying aout in all directions around me - Nine of swords, DEATH. Three of Swords, DEATH. The Tower, DEATH. The Charito, DEATH.
I awoke screaming, wtih Anoouk standing above me, her dark face blurry with sleep and anxiety.
"Maman, what is it?" Her arms are warm around my neck. She smells of chocolate and vanilla and peaceful untroubled sleep.
"Nothing. A dream. Nothing."
She croons to me in her small soft voice, and I have an unnerviing impression of thw orld reversed, of myself melting into her like a nautilus into its spiral, round-around-around, of her hand cool on my forehead, her mouth against my hair, "Out-out, out," she murmurs automatically. "Evil spirits, get thee hence. It's okay now , maman. All gone." I don't know where she picks these things up from. My mother used to say that, but I don't remember ever teaching Anouk. And yet she uses it like an old familiar formula.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 144


Ironic, isn't it? A week ago I was still uestioning my own faith. Too self-absorbed to see the sings. Too feeble to play my part. And yet the Bible tels us uite clearly what we must do. Weeds and wehat cannot grow peacefully together. Any gardener could tell you the same thing.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 151



It is difficult to remember that until last week they were barely nodding aqcuaintances. There is a kind of intensity with them now, a lowered tone, a suggestion of intimacy. Politics, music, chess, religion, rugby, poetry - the swoop and segue from one topic to another like gourmets at a buffet who cannot bear to leave any dish untasted.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 152


"It's dreadful," he said, "but I have such an appetite. I feel as if I haven't eaten for a month. I've just buried my dog, and I could eat a -" He broke off in confusion. It feels terribly wrong somehow, " he said. "Like eating meat on Good Friday."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 156


"No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 157


"Where do you think Charly isnow, marman?"
There are lies I could tell her, comforting lies. But I find a I cannot. "I don't know, Nanou. I like to think - we can start again. In a new body that ins't old or sick. Or in a bird, or a tree. But no one one really knows."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 157

I dotn' think there is such a thing as a good or bad Christian," i told him. "Only good or bad people."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 171



"In that case, the things I've believe all my life - about sin and redemption and the mortification of the body - you'd say one of those things mean anything, wouldn't you?"
I smiled at his seriousness, "I'd say you've been talking to Armade, " I said gently. "And I'd also say that you and she are entitled to your beliefs. As long as they make you happy."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 172



I don't want to take this medicine every day," she said calmly. "I don't want to follow endless diet-sheets. I don't want to be waited on by kind nurses who talk to me as if I were in kindergarten. I'm eighty years old for crying out loud, and if I can't be trusted to know wha I want at my age - "
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 214


My dear girl, at my age I can be anything I please. I can be absurd if I felt like it. I'm old enough to get away with anything.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 217


"I don't think that white collar gives you sole right of access to the divine," she finished more gently. "I think there may be room somewhere for both of us, don't you?"
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 225


It is not she, but I who have been flind. The red-ribboned walking stick, the tentative gestures, the unfinished tapestry, the eyes shadowed beneath a succession of hats...
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 227


"You're not so old," I wailed in spite of myself. "I can't believe you're giving up like this!"
She looked at me. "And yet you were the one, weren't you, who told Guillaume to leave Charly some dignity."
"You're not a dog!" I retorted, angry now.
"No," replied Armande softely, "and I have a choice."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 229


Perhaps it is what I suspected from the first, that Reynaud and I are linked, that one balances the other and without him I have no purpose here.
Whatever it is, the neediness of the town is gone; I can feel satisfaction in its place, a full-bellied satiety with no more room for me. In homes everywhere in Lansquenet couples are making love, children are playing, dogs are barking, televisions blaring...without us.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 305


No longer will tourists drive through Lansquenet on the way to other places. I have put the invisible town on the map.
Joanne Harris, Chocolat, pg 305



VOCABULARY - Chocolate, Joanne Harris

Augury, pg 54
-the art or practice of an augur; divination. 2. the rite or ceremony of an augur. 3. an omen, token, or indication.
-1 : divination from auspices or omens; also : an instance of this 2 : omen, portent
-The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods
- the art of divination by observing the behaviour of birds--was extensively cultivated by the Etrurians and Romans.
-The object of augury was not so much to foretell the future as to indicate what line of action should be followed, in any given circumstances, by the nation. The augurs were consulted on all matters of importance, and the position of augur was thus one of great consequence.


Bravado, pg 101
- pretended courage or defiant confidence when one is really afraid.
- 1. a. Defiant or swaggering behavior: strove to prevent our courage from turning into bravado.
- A pretense of bravery; The quality or state of being foolhardy; A blustering swaggering conduct;
- to challenge, to show off


dour, pg 169
1. sullen; gloomy: Marked by sternness or harshness; forbidding: a dour, self-sacrificing life.



Guenwald, pg 207
is German for "green forest" and may refer to ... German painter and poet; Mark Gruenwald (1953-1996),


gendarmes, pg between 71? and 76?
- medieval or early modern cavalryman
- plural of gent d'armes, literally, armed people. Date: 1793
- a uniformed national police force, sometimes part of the military.


Linchpin, pg 32
a fastener used to prevent a wheel or other rotating part from sliding off the axle.


mimosa, pg 209
a cocktail-like drink composed of three parts champagne or other sparkling wine and two parts thoroughly chilled orange juice



segue, pg 152
1. Music To make a transition directly from one section or theme to another. 2. To move smoothly and unhesitatingly from one state, condition, situation, or element to another.


St. Elmo's Fire, pg 163
a weather phenomena that often appears on the masts of ships and the wings of airplanes. an electrical weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a coronal discharge originating from a grounded object in an atmospheric electric field (such as those generated by thunderstorms or thunderstorms created by a volcanic explosion).
St. Elmo's fire is named after St. Erasmus of Formiae (also called St. Elmo, a common mispronunciation among sailors of St. Ermo), the patron saint of sailors. The phenomenon sometimes appeared on ships at sea during thunderstorms and was regarded by sailors with religious awe for its glowing ball of light, accounting for the name.


Tia Maria, pg 71
a Jamaican rum-based coffee liqueur.


treacly, pg 208
resembling treacle, tread down · tread on · tread on (someone's); overly sweet. cloying, saccharine, syrupy · sweet - having or denoting the characteristic taste of sugar ; Obsolete. a remedy for poison; any effective remedy. Brit. molasses; anything very sweet or cloying. Before the revolution Chukovsky had tried to free children's literature from treacly verse and goody-goody stories